Michigan DT Kenneth Grant shares impressions of Josh Priebe, Jaishawn Barham, reveals a position switch
A defensive tackle, Michigan Wolverines football junior Kenneth Grant goes against the offensive line and plays in conjunction with the linebackers. That makes him uniquely qualified to assess two newcomers to the team — graduate offensive lineman Josh Priebe (Northwestern transfer) and junior linebacker Jaishawn Barham (Maryland).
Priebe and Grant have had some battles on the interior of the line of scrimmage.
“Priebe is a really good blocker,” Grant said “He’s well all around. I’ll say he’s really good with his feet and hands and leverage. He’s a pretty good guy.”
Barham, meanwhile, has shown his athleticism in the early going, while he still has some work to do in getting up to speed with the defense.
“Jaishawn is very athletic, fast, big,” Grant said. “He just needs to learn the play book. It’s not like he’s messing up or anything, but just coming from another defense just trying to learn the play book and where he fits in and how things work.”
In high school, Barham ran a 4.58-second 40-yard dash. He’s big and physical at 6-foot-3, 233 pounds, in addition to possessing good speed. He made 58 tackles as a freshman in 2022, ranking third on the Terrapins, and posted 59 stops as a sophomore last fall.
Grant and his classmate and former defensive tackle, Mason Graham, have long credited Michigan veterans for helping their development. Now, those two are upperclassmen helping younger guys along. That includes sophomore Enow Etta, who practiced mostly at EDGE last season but has slid inside this spring, per Grant.
“He’s a very twitchy and powerful dude,” Grant said of Etta. “He’s just taking it all in. He used to play EDGE, but kind of moving him more inside and stuff, he’s doing a really good job. Me and Mason are just trying to teach him as much as we can so he can adapt really quick.”
It’s an adjustment going from end to tackle, Grant said, but the 6-foot-5, 295-pound Etta is taking to it.
“Just being quicker with your hands and reacting to different blocks on the inside, because on the inside things tend to happen a little faster,” Grant said of the requirements of the position. “So just getting off the rock and not getting blown off the rock — stuff like that, small details.”
Michigan is currently without a defensive line coach, but graduate assistant LaTroy Lewis, who primarily works with linebackers, has stepped up to help out. Grant and the group have taken to him.
“It’s a really good brotherhood, so we see each other every day pretty much,” Grant said of Michigan’s defensive line. “It’s not really an adjustment, just knowing the guys that we have in our room and just trying to perfect our craft and criticize everyone a lot and perfect the craft.
“Coach LaTroy, he’s doing a really good job working with us on a day-to-day basis. [Defensive coordinator] Wink [Martindale], he oversees [the defense], but he also works with us, too, a little bit. Coach LaTroy is doing a great job. I’m definitely learning a lot from him, because he played in the NFL, he’s kind of a younger type of dude so I can relate more and he’s doing a really good job.”
